This book explores person markers, the linguistic elements that provide points of reference to speech-act participants. Michael Cysouw develops a new framework for the typology of person marking based on the rejection of the notion of plurality for its analysis. When a mother says "Mummy is going to say goodnight now", Mummy is the person marker in a way that in English is confined to motherese but which is used more commonly in some other languages and may also be characteristic of much earlier forms. Dr Cysouw divides the person markers of 400 languages into paradigms. He considers how the structure of these person paradigms relates to their function. His investigation provides a clear account of how person markers work syntactically, pragmatically, and semantically as well as giving fresh insights into aspects of linguistic change, language-relatedness, and the interfaces between discourse, syntax, and semantics. The combination of a typological and a comparative approach results in the first outline of a cognitive map of the paradigmatic structure of person marking.
Michael Cysouw, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
"courageous and highly innovative approach to the paradigmatic architecture of personhood from a cross-linguistic perspective . . . The author has developed a highly stimulating way of handling and presenting cross-linguistic data, which helps the reader to safely navigate through the world of linguistic variation . . ." - Wolfgang Schulze, The Linguist List
1: Introduction: Objective, definitions, method and some history Part One: Person marking 2: One among the crowd: The marking of singular participants 3: Group marking: Redefining plurality in the pronominal domain Part Two: Paradigmatic structure 4: The diversity of the core: A survey of patterns of singular and group marking 5: Compound pronouns: Other person categories disqualified Part Three: Number incorporated 6: Cardinality: Redefining number in the pronominal domain 7: The diversity of restricted groups: A survey of dual person marking Part Four: Cognate paradigms 8: Connecting paradigms: Person paradigms through time and space 9: Cognate paradigms revisited: Connecting the dual 10: Conclusion
